The typical modern workplace is heavily computerized, with communication, scheduling, and work output all now either primarily or entirely computer based. Much of the formerly paper intra-office communication can be performed using electronic email.
A problem commonly experienced in a corporate environment is the accumulation of complex scheduling tasks in the course of the business day. It is estimated that there are an average of 2500 messages per any user's inbox at any time. A large percentage of those messages entails or refers to a meeting, appointment or task that is related to one or more users' calendars.
Email is often used to communicate information about a meeting, or a desired meeting, including background information, who should attend, etc., that may require significant coordination efforts. Many times, however, the desired meetings may remain unscheduled because an important message is overlooked or because the coordination effort between several potential attendees' calendars may be too complex to accomplish efficiently. Additionally, manually scheduling and coordinating busy users' calendars may not guarantee that all necessary attendees are notified or that a given user will find messages related to upcoming meetings in time to make use of the information.
Users commonly receive email messages that cause them to immediately create an appointment or task (to do) on a calendar. Later, when looking at the calendar, they need to find the email message that originally caused the scheduled meeting, appointment or task to be created. However, it is extremely difficult to find a specific email when it is lost in thousands of messages, if it is not flagged or linked in some way. Currently, there is no mechanism to assist in either the automatic scheduling or automatic linking of meetings and associated email messages.